Geoff Townsend, PhD

Dr. Geoff Townsend is an Industry Fellow for Ecolab. He engages in the strategic direction of Ecolab’s water and energy related innovation with a particular emphasis on enabling our customers to meet the challenges associated with water scarcity and water quality constraints while minimising the financial and environmental impact.

Geoff TownsendEcolab Industry Fellow, RD&E Water

Previously, Dr. Townsend was a Research Associate focusing primarily on the water management challenges of Heavy Industry. Geoff worked in academia before commencing his career in industrial water management at Calgon Corporation in 1991. He held several positions in sales, marketing, and technical management and in 1999 became the Technical Director for Nalco in EAME.

Dr. Townsend has gained extensive experience from the design, optimization and trouble-shooting of many key utility processes across a variety of industries including power production and petrochemical processing. Over the years he has served on several committees and presented at numerous international scientific meetings. Dr. Townsend is actively engaged in a variety of Ecolab’s sustainability initiatives particularly in the area of water stewardship and the water-energy-food nexus, becoming an important advocate of this message at numerous conferences including the United Nations Environmental Programme, World Forum, B4E, European Commission and corporate training sessions. In 2009, he was asked to participate on the ISO Standard Committee for Water Footprinting (ISO 14046), and from its inception he has been working with the Alliance for Water Stewardship/World Wildlife Fund to establish a voluntary certification programme for water managers. In 2013, Dr. Townsend commenced an initiative with the AWS to lessen the industrial impacts on Lake Taihu in China, a primary water source for over 33 million people, and has also assisted with realizing several wastewater recycle projects in Europe and the Middle East.

Dr. Townsend received a BSc (Hons) in Ecology (UEA) and a Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, UK.

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